One of the recent received submissions was from Rachael Elizabeth Broadhurst. She’s a photographer based in the South West of England. She specializes in wedding photography, event photography and exhibition art pieces. She founded Martian Arts Images, a bespoke photography service. She has been featured in many profile magazines, she collaborated with big companies and has been an official photographer to many prestigious events.

Polavoid is her latest project, a new series inspired by two major themes: autopilot life and Polaroid photos.

Rachel says in her artist statement that she’s amazed how people can walk through life without noticing what’s happening around them. Many of us often choose to disconnect and we fall so deep in our own agenda that we seem to forget there’s an outside world also.

“I heard an interesting story about a man dressed in a monkey suit being sent around a supermarket with a trolley and, astonishingly, none of his fellow shoppers batted an eyelid. Often we can be so trapped in autopilot that we don’t notice that which is blatantly obvious when pointed out.”

The second theme was the use of old technologies in photography. When noticing that even modern apps have extra features to replicate Polaroid photos with their famous white frames, she decided to bring them up to light again. Instant photographs still hold an important place and give us joy. Working in the event industry can surely give you a clear glimpse of this fact.

“It would seem that, in spite of more up-to-date options, the Polaroid picture still has a place in our hearts. My series of pictures uses four Polaroid photographs juxtaposed with DSLR backgrounds to highlight the desire for this almost obsolete format in a world geared towards high-resolution images and almost infinite camera memory.”

Rachel tells us that the whole project was a working progress, trying to find the perfect match between mundane scenarios and her Polaroid shoots.

“(…) I am allowing others the opportunity to enjoy the pictures as fully as I do while hopefully finding them pleasing to look at and appreciating the hard work that has brought them to life.”

In the end we asked Rachel what’s the next step in her career as a photographer, so she happily share with us her plans for the future.

I’m currently working on my next creative project, Shot Proof. It’s a series about the negative effects of alcohol that I started shooting after two close members of my family were severely damaged by this powerful drug. I am primarily a wedding photographer so I imagine the upcoming weddings will occupy a lot of my days, but I always set aside time to follow my true passion; exhibition art pieces such as Polavoid. Watch this space!

You can view the entire collection of photographs and more projects on Rachel’s website.